Lifecycle Services

Our existing Data Centre Services portfolio covers those areas required to achieve a reliable, resilient and energy/cost efficient data centre throughout its entire Lifecycle. This includes all elements of infrastructure engineering from refitting or refurbishing a legacy data centre through to equipment refresh or replacement, infrastructure optimisation and recommissioning based on life cycle requirements. Future-tech are experts in project management and risk free installations in live operational environments with a clear focus on minimising any impact on ongoing service delivery. Future-tech engineers focus on maintaining service availability and uptime, reducing costs and increasing efficiencies throughout their comprehensive portfolio of Data Centre Operations, Engineering and Maintenance Services.

Maintenance

Our existing Data Centre Services portfolio covers all areas required to achieve reliable and energy / cost efficient maintenance and operations within a data centre. This includes all elements of infrastructure maintenance and engineering including the management of operating costs, energy management and infrastructure optimisation. Future-tech are experts in risk free maintenance and critical facilities management in live operational environments with a clear focus on minimising any impact on ongoing service delivery. Future-tech engineers focus on maintaining service availability and uptime, reducing costs and increasing efficiencies throughout their comprehensive portfolio of Data Centre Operations, Engineering and Maintenance Services.

New Build

Future-tech's New Build Data Centre Services covers design, build, equipment specification and procurement for any new data centre project. From greenfield data centre development to the conversion of existing buildings, and from micro to mega facilities, Future-tech are recognised as industry leaders in new data centre design and build.

Solutions

Professional Services

Our professional services portfolio covers the entire lifecycle of the data centre. From requirements and design through to audits, optimisation and client representation, our services are designed and carried out by our in-house specialist data centre experts.

Award-winning data centre design and build for the University of St Andrews

Award-winning data centre design and build at the University of St Andrews. The old ICT infrastructure and approach was not always fit for purpose in an era of growing organisational dependence on IT, the demand for innovative service delivery and value for money.

Energy Efficient Data Centre

THE BRIEF

University of St Andrews were awarded a grant from Salix to help build a new high efficiency “green” data centre. This project is part of a larger campus development scheme and will provide the critical IT infrastructure needed to maintain St Andrews status as the world leading university.

The University required a data centre that could support up to 12kW in any cabinet and an average IT load of 9.6kW per cabinet, providing a flexible and dynamic infrastructure platform, with class leading energy efficiency and 99.99% uptime with maintainability of major plant items.

CHALLENGES AND CONSTRAINTS

The utilisation of the data centre on day one was to be less than 25%, however the data centre had to have a PUE of better than 1.45. Although utilisation would be gradual due to budgets, all the infrastructure for the final day had to be installed on day one, rather than using a phased approach.

The new data centre build is located within 100 meters of the sea. This means there is a very high saline content in the air precluding the use of direct fresh air cooling. Also the area designated for the data centre build was two disused squash courts. This area had to contain all cabinets, UPS, AHUs, generator, network room, build room, external plant and entrance lobby, therefore space was a constraint.

THE FUTURE-TECH SOLUTION

The Future-tech data centre solution has provided St Andrews with N+1 resilience on power and cooling and a PUE of 1.2. Along with this efficient cooling system, heat from the dry air coolers are used to help maintain the backup generators idle temperature, easing the load on the unit’s crank case heater, saving money and CO2. Although the energy consumption was a primary influencer in the data centre design there were further environmental factors such as noise and the status of the St Andrews Campus to take in to account. To keep noise from the dry air coolers and generator to a minimum they are housed within a small building with acoustic louvres either end. This allows the correct level of air flow through the space whilst providing acoustic protection to the surrounding area.

The data centre installation and supporting infrastructure took Future-tech fourteen weeks resulting in a facility that is energy efficient, sympathetic to its surroundings and is able to support the university for the next decade. The facility was awarded the CEEDA Gold Accreditation, the Data Centre Dynamics Innovation IT Optimisation Award and Uptime Institute Special Recognition. Future-tech continues to work with the University of St. Andrews providing PPM Maintenance and Optimisation Services.